The Stone Thief
by Gracious Anne
Summary: After a vicious murder where Robin's arrow is seen as the killing blow, Marian and Robin become outlaws in Sherwood and struggle to stay alive and together as one fears their past and other fears their future.
1. Sunrise in Sherwood

Robin Hood is not the man you think he is. He will not tell me his true name. He says it is that better that I do not know. Better for me or better for him to forget his loathsome past? I am moot on that point. Broader shoulders and a darker brow shield him from common questions about his origin, but he is from the east of our fair isle. I have discerned that much. And yet, I wonder how much I can trust him. If he cannot tell me his real name, how am I to give him my trust? But I wish to tell the story of how we first met.

* * *

He gave me reason to shoot him when I lost my way in the forest. It had become a game, hunting him and his dark friend, Little John, a merrier past time to drive our village's men into the wood after that hooded fox. Father had set a price on the man's head when he stole my ceremonial purse from my belt in the market field. Inside were my mother's spoon, and a lock of my mother's hair. Small trinkets of a woman passed to the netherworld. He ran like a hare, through the tall briar-like weeds towards Sherwood. I had turned and shouted at him, begun to run after him, anger building in my chest. Will, my brother was faster than I, lighter in loose leggings. He did not catch him, but he did claim a single arrow from his quiver as his own, a small prize for his brave chase. The boys and men had whooped and hollered at the sky when my father asked they seek this forest thief and capture him for the return of my purse.

It was the ecstasy of chase that drove them, past all marks of a trail into the brush with Will in the lead, Robin's slim green arrow in his hand. We were all children of the forest. Our fathers hunted there, our mothers took us to the slow moving streams to bath, and we all ate its fruits. But Robin Hood was a stranger to us, a child of a supplanted land hunting through our fog and trees for the prize hart. And he knew all its bosom secrets, its haunted corps with the ghosts of roman legions passing by. Those young men did not hear the wren's call above their heads, as I was sure he did, sitting out of the sun on a limb of an oak, watching the shadows dance on the forest floor. I ran behind them, my skirts flecked with dirt, a bow in my hand and half-full quiver on my back. I was not sure he had family here. Or why he hid in the woods. We all knew of Little John, his dark coldblooded friend who eyed us all with disdain in the market place. We thought he might be vagabond, a nomad wintering here.

I walked the forest until it grew dark, and then I waited. Soft sounds of trees creaking and the night calls of the beasts as I waited til dusk following my brother and his jolly band halfway home before turning aside. A boy in the village, had claimed he had seen the mysterious Robin alight in a tree and sit down, watching the sun rise, like a lost lover, silent and burnt with the fire of time. That had been a Sunday morn, as was tomorrow. Perhaps it was his traditional wont to see the sunrise on a new week, the day the Lord rested. I walked deeper in the eastern part of the forest hoping he would hear my unquiet footsteps and rest in a tree near me. I moved through the briars and climbed over rotting logs and darted spiders webs in the dying light. I moved slower and slower, towards what I thought would be a glen, a stone hut of the romans left to fester and crumble. But it became clear that after an hour, my search had lead me nowhere. I was lost. My brother knew I had stayed behind, and thought I would probably be within the village borders, wandering at will, conversing with the children. I cursed under my breath, I might have had to wait until morning to find the road that led through Sherwood and back to our little village, but Robin Hood could not wait that long.

I saw the glint of fire in the distance as I stumbled in the dark brush, my hair tangled and my hem dark with mud. I climbed over stone and wood to get to the small brush fire, where Robin Hood stood waiting for me. His back was turned to me, towards the fire and a wooden spit where a hare revolved slowly. The man known as Little John was spinning it. I was not as quiet as I had hoped to be, however, and my footsteps alerted them to my presence before I was truly ready. They jumped and Robin spun around an arrow already on his string, ready. Why was he responding this way? I ducked down and lay flat. Surely, he had tracked my brother's movements to the edge of the forest and waited for me to find him. I had heard he did not speak with women, at least, not for any purpose than to buy a loaf of bread. I did not believe he wished me harm. Still, I strung my bow. I knew that stance, that manner of breath poised on the edge of explosion waiting for a leaf to fall. It would not be best for him blindly to let an arrow fly. I took a deep breath, and moved for the nearest, thickest tree. An arrow, almost as silent as an owl, and sharp as its claws flew by my leg. I waited a moment breathing in the cold night air under the tree, knowing my next move must be to still his bow. I squared my shoulders, pulling my arms wide, turned, and let my arrow loose.

A cry broke from his lips. I saw him crumble, bow falling out of his hand. I had hit his arm. A flesh wound. I ran towards the fire, not heeding Little John who stopped me with an outstretched hand. He looked at me with confusion and surprise. He had not expected me. Robin Hood lay on the ground cradling his arm, bow and arrow fallen close to the fire. My arrow was already pulled from the wound and thrown aside. He turned and looked up at me with the same look as Little John. Grey eyes found mine with anger and confusion.

Then Little John began to laugh. Robin stood up slowly still holding his arm, and I stepped back away from him.

"I expected more help friend," he said to Little John with a light European accent that was not of English soil.

Little John laughed all the more. He sat back down cross-legged and began to turn the rabbit once more.

"Lady why did you shoot at me?" He asked me. He was taller than Will.

Little John answered, "She wants her purse back you silly boy."

"Yes, I do want that," I replied, "but I shot you because you would not have missed a second time, and it is better that I have shot you rather you of me."

He nodded. "That is true." The penalty for shooting a person of my rank was cruel.

"What was the other reason?" His eyes searched mine in the firelight.

"I came to watch the sunrise with you."

He was taken aback but pleased. I could see it. He glanced at Little John. Little John only smiled, his eyes glittering. Robin shrugged his shoulders and he picked up his bow and set again the tree.

We sat an hour, watching the hare spin awhile then sharing its meat. Robin wrapped his arm with a bit of cloth and shook it out every once and while. He gave me back my purse with my mother's spoon and hair, and I tried to eat bits of rabbit with it, with no luck. He laughed at that.

I cannot remember much of what we talked about that night or what songs we sang, but I do remember the sunrise. He took my hand, gently, and led me up the tree as the pink colors of dawn touched the stars. It was cold and dew stuck to my tangled hair but there was a common understanding that this no ordinary sunrise. And so it was, a bright glowing globe rose as bright as the first bonfires in May.

Neither of us spoke until it was full, running up the sky, the forest full of morning songs.

"Why did you steal my purse?" I asked at last, walking through the forest along a new and secret route to the village.

"Hope, Lady" he said.

"My father has a price on your head." I did not tell him it was only for his capture.

"And I'm sure there always will be," said Robin.

And he was right.

* * *

**A/N This is the new first chapter. Since I have found out that I was previously writing the middle instead of the beginning and had little idea who Robin Hood was in this story. I apologize to the two readers Silvre Musgrave and Rawr I'm A Toaster**. **You will see the chapters you have read again, but they need to be revised. **

**Thank you for reading!  
**

***Reviews are always welcome. The good and the bad.* **


	2. Herne's Son

Hard winters drew Robin Hood to our village, nearer to the light and warmth of thatch huts and simple stone pathways. Our village was not Nottingham, which lay to the east, with its tall walls and flaunted towers, but it was home. And so, Robin hood came there with little but his friend, Little John, and a man whom he called Alan-a-Dale. He stayed to the outer edges like a lone wolf too afraid to prowl. My father was kind to him, allowing him to partake in the evening meal under the stars when dark weather did not threaten us, though he glanced at his guests purses now and again to make sure the dark stranger had not abused his welcome.

He did not speak to me. I hardly knew why, except that he was foreigner, and hesitant about our ways. Will asked me not to watch for him when I stared into the fields. I could only stare even more, watching him teach the children who not afraid of him how to fight in the darkness by bonfire light. Will said his stance and air was that of soldier, but not of England. Our father did not seem pleased knowing that. Foreigners could be bought at a price and more blood split for nothing but a handful of silver and a worn slip of land. The younger village children were afraid of him at first, with his hard unblinking gaze like a deer. My father was the priest of Hanford, both of our church and the Old ways the people were loath to give up. The old men in the village called him Herne-son, for at our festivals and blessed days he wore the head of a white hart.

At the solstice, he sat by the fires in turns, telling stories of the old ways through the smoke and the flames of our far ancestors from the north and the south, of Freya's cats and the swords of Wayland. Robin seemed to follow him, for he appeared at every circle beside me as I held the offering cup and passed it amongst the elders he did not want to miss a word my father said that night. I thought of how we shared the Sunday sunrise, watched it touch gossamer strands and turn them to gold, and how the forest suddenly became filled with sound and the bubbly laughter of the wind. I smiled in remembering how I had beaten him, the mightiest archer perhaps in all of England at his own sport. He was still listening, enraptured by my father's low voice, one conjurer's and the wizard of Herth had used it is said to bring back the spirit of my father when he was killed, his face slashed into unrecognizable hash under a great oak tree. Though no one could say if this story of my father's was true, there were stranger long scars on his face that no story could heal. I glanced up at the unseeing eyes of the wild hart my father had killed so many years ago. I remembered curling my fingers around its crown of bone when I was younger, standing on a stool to reach it as it hung in the hall where all could see it. I remembered its smoothness, its long muzzle still stained with its blood even still. I almost wanted to touch it again, now, while it was on my father's head. I did not, though my hands wished to grasp the crown once more as I had when I was a child, and to feel the rumble of my father's voice echo through them. That was sacrilege, for none may touch him while he wears the hart's head.

So I sat with my hands in my lap and tried to recover my momentary glow in beating a man at archery. I felt Robin still listening beside me though his gaze was turned towards the fire as was many, as my father told us tales of Solomon and his father. I suddenly felt warmth on my hand. I glanced down and saw that Robin was unabashedly holding my hand in his. Albeit my hand was cold, but I knew he might be playing with me. Festivals often led to sudden betrothals under the moon, heated by winter fires and my father's stories of brave hearts and found love.

But Robin's face was clouded in some distant memory. A terrible memory that led him looking for comfort and not companionship. I squeezed his hand once and let go. Robin glanced at me in apology, ashamed. He shifted away and I felt once more the cold of winter at my back. Will glared at him from across the way, his face half lit by flame, his hands clenched. I had no thought as to why he would care so much. I was of age and had more say in whom my husband would be if my words were held rightly in my father's eyes.

Suddenly, Robin was gone from my side, a ghost in the shadows of the fields. My father's voice never wavered, though I knew from his stiffened manner and the slight flare of his nostrils that something was wrong. He paused a moment and stood up as if to stretch his muscles from hours of tale telling. Will leapt from his seat, he too now a ghost beyond the firelight. I heard rustling beyond the fires and strained to see what was coming towards us through the tall grass.

It was already too late. A cry rang out, a bloodcurdling scream from a woman twined with a man's grunt and the sickening sound of bones cracking. The next few moments were all chaos. Men sprang to their feet and wrestled from their racks any sharp tool or weapon they had. Arrow and bow of which we had a plenty were useless in this darkness. I struggled to find my feet, being pushed down in the hurry to find the cause of this restless cry.

I ran to the earthen thatch house of Yanne, the closest house, yanking my skirts free of my stumbling feet. I heard children inside, crying. I heard Will's voice behind me, calling for the men to stand with him and move together as one. I turned as I reached the threshold, my breath coming in ragged breaks. I searched the fields from that point trying to catch my breath looking for my father's horned head in the confusion. I could not see him.

Yanne and her children came behind me and moved softly. They were shaken.

"Did you see anything?" I asked them.

"Yes," came Yanne's soft voice behind me. "Three men." "Giants," she added.

"Only three?"

"Their faces were covered in mud and paint, and they had axes the size of both my hands."

We stood and watched for giants to tumble into the light of the bonfires, for my brother was running back towards the village and us with his men behind him. I could not see my father.

Then two men, taller and larger than any we have ever seen crashed into view, with the man Robin Hood dragged between them. Will and his men watched a moment before charging down the hill towards them with a loud cry. Robin suddenly shifted in the giant's grasp and struck him in the gut, and the giant let out a heavy breath, releasing Robin. Robin spun on his heel and did the same to the other giant, who fell to the ground as Will, ever the reckless man, let an arrow fly in the dark and hit a lucky arrow true and fast into the giant's head. Robin moved faster than my eyes could catch, but he swung his fists against the second giant's ears and made them bled. Then he went for the third, which had begun to hammer down on my brother's band with his thick fists somehow impenetrable by their knives. Swift as a hare, Robin picked up the fallen giant's hatchet and swung it wide, catching the third giant's backside with an awful noise as iron hit a ribs. The man yelled and tried to unnerve the hatchet from his side before falling too.

As I watched Robin take down the last man from the hills, a feeling of shame and guilt washed over me. I had thought I had beat this man of the wood and brush. It was clear I had not. I had taken him unawares perhaps in the darkness that night in Sherwood, but here he stood, giving these men a solid lashing for their disgraceful entrance. My father at last found me and stood watching this man kill the last giant with his own hatchet. I believe my father saw my admiring gaze at Robin Hood for he never sanctioned his courting me that spring, but he did not lift his voice in disapproval of Robin either. It might have been Robin's flash of smile towards me as he strode up the hill, bloodied but victorious, that silenced him from saying yay or nay. Robin clasped hands with my father that night, and made him the protector of the village. Will lazily disagreed with our father's decision, but never did much more than insult Robin's lack of knowledge of the sword. Robin took his criticism with a chuckle and held his knife belt more tightly, I knew then he took pride in his fighting, which would be his downfall in the months of spring, when my brother's head was cooler and wiser.

Where those men came from we did not yet know, but Robin knew of their stance and of their garb although it did not make sense even to him. He had told my father by the fire as he put the antlered headpiece back on the mantle that they were men of the Holy Land. And once more, they had still had that dust in their shoes, and the smell of incense on their cloths.


	3. Sheriff

In the weeks that passed the event of the festival, My brother and his friends had left on a mission of my father in the forest, ever so secretive, as a son of a priest should be, so our village was bare of any jovial laughter and the moods of young men restless for adventure. Besides what games the children played, there were no fake skirmishes or contests or gambling, in fact there was only one young man left in the village, and that was Robin Hood. He stuck the edges and the shadows much of the time looking almost fearful that his dark countenance would ruin our milk and the women's washing and sewing. Except for playing with the children when they grew bored of each other, we never noticed him in the alehouse or at table of a farmer's enjoying their hospitality. Thus, when I saw Robin Hood standing in the village center speaking to the Miller I was astonished

He stood there tall, and straight as a birch tree, the slow building wind that blew at my skirts did not move him at all. He was not amused, by all accounts. He was listening carefully to what the miller had to say very adamantly to him. As I approached, I found the miller was angrier than I had first supposed. Of course, as was the village's stubborn wont ever since Robin Hood had moved to our village and left the woods, he was trying on behalf of the village to bully the man into to telling him his name.

Since Robin Hood had his back to me it was the Miller that saw me first, and I knew I must hold my growing agitation at bay if I was to calm him. He addressed me.

"Lady, this man will not give me his name," he said, a wearying shade of pink as so adorned his face when he got into arguments.

Robin Hood did not acknowledge me at first when I turned to him for, yet again, the same explanation he always gave. He stared at his feet, his arms lazily crossing his chest.

"Robin Hood is my name. That is all you need know." said Robin Hood, a determined look on his face. He would not back down. A simple glance down at the quiver by his hip made the Miller's expression turned sour.

"Do not threaten me, sir-" 

"Miller, there is no need," I interrupted. "Robin Hood has been nothing if not our protector from threats for these past few weeks. Now, walk away." I added forcefully.

Robin Hood looked at me gratefully as the Miller huffed and opened his mouth to say something else, but he turned on his heel and went on his way, to the alehouse if I knew him as well as I thought I did.

"Thank you," he said simply, leaning back against the communal stone basin filled with murky water. He looked tired.

I hesitated before speaking to him. He was still a stranger, still a loner after he had left Little John in the smaller forest of Pell. He had saved us from the foreigners, killing them both in the end before the bonfires burnt out, and helped us bury them beside the north road, but we still knew very little about him. He seemed on edge much of the time, pulled thin by inner devils, haunted by distant memories of some past as he crossed at the village yard path to the fields in the early morning, unseeing. He was silent about his past, and distrustful of giving out even his alias. How was I to persuade him and give up his secrets?

"I wish you would be truthful with us," I began, but stopped when he suddenly focused on something behind, eyes narrowing, alarmed.

I turned quickly to see three men, strangers with long strong quarterstaffs walked into the yard, their beards grisly and the smell of strong ale resounded off them. Robin Hood stiffened beside me. They did not look as if they were going to wish us good day. One of them tapped his fingers against his staff, grinned at me amiably before one of them noticed Robin, and began to laugh coldly.

"Lady," said the one with the grin, "the man there has a price on his head. I would not stand close if I were you."

Robin gave the man a dark look.

"So do you I would imagine," said Robin, his hand resting now on his sheathed knife.

"Are you not the Threaded Hangmen?" asked Robin. The knife moved a hair's breath out its sheath.

I edged away towards the safety of Yanne's house, where she now stood at the threshold.

The three men faces darkened and they gripped their staffs harder, knuckles whitening.

"Aye," said one, good-naturedly.

"I am wanted by a lowly tax collector." said Robin. "You are wanted by the King himself."

The men's faces blanched. It seemed they had not learned that knowledge.

"The price on your heads is higher than mine," said Robin, "I have the advantage, but"—the

knife came out another inch—"if you wish to gamble losing your lives on the execution block against the petty price on my head, I can humbly oblige."

The men looked at each other for a moment and loosened their grips on their staffs.

"I bid you gentlemen to leave now, before I decide the price on your heads is too much to resist."

The men glumly turned and walked off, towards the north road and out of town. After they were out of sight Robin sighed and sheathed his knife.

"I almost hoped for brawl," he admitted, "I believe I'm suffering from laziness living off your town's hospitality. I should be given work to do." He turned and stared at me almost expectedly.

I avoided his gaze. I thought a moment then I grinned.

"I think I know of how to busy you." I said. I walked off in the direction of my father's house.

Robin ran up beside me and slowed his pace to join mine.

"And what is this business?" He asked curiously, cocking his head to the side at me, his hands behind his back like a schoolboy.

I had to stop myself from smirking. He looked endearing when he was trying to be lighthearted. I had seen it when the children asked him to shoot their made up targets of hay and rotten trees.

"I am going to ask my father to make you sheriff," I told him, now grinning from ear to ear.

He sighed and rolling his eyes, dropping his shoulders.

"Am I to shoot more imaginary targets when there are no children biting each other's ears?"

"Possibly."

"This town is too small to have a sheriff."

"You dealt with those men. And there will be more. We need someone. It might as well be you, and you might as well have a title."

"I was bluffing those men."

I halted, raising my eyebrows at him. His expression was grave. He was serious.

"And if those men would have challenged you?" I asked, proceeding to walk again.

"I would have tried to fight them off."

"You might have died."

"Hence the bluff."

We were silent as we crossed my father's threshold. But just as I approached my father and opened my mouth to speak, Robin interjected:

"Sir," he said, "I beg you to consider your daughter's entreaty with good faith that I will need a deputy if I am to perform this duty rightly. I ask that you consider your daughter as a candidate. She is a crack shot."

My father looked at both of us with absolute confusion. I shot the man a warning look. Robin Hood bowed his head, trying to hide his smile from us as I explained how he could know how what sort of archer I was when I had not picked up a bow in years. My night with him in the tree, my secret archery lessons with my brother Will, and the need for a semblance of justice in even our village was brought out in colors more red and pink than black and white on my face. I resolved to give Robin Hood a beating if I ever got the chance. And once more my father smiled at me as if he knew something I did not. No amount of daughterly pestering got it out of him. I found myself longing for Will to be home again. At least _he_ was direct in his speech and actions.


	4. Fragments

My name is not Lady Marian, though the people still call me by that title. They see my mother in my face, I'm sure, and that is why they address thus in the fields as I pass them planting grain for the next season. My brother has told me that I look like my mother. I was little when she died. The villagers called her Little Flower in their own tongue, a strange mixture of our French and the Saxon strand. They loved her, too much, I think for a noble woman, newly given that privilege by a then benevolent King, and she suffered under the weight.

When my father was stripped of his Lordship three years ago, for whatever new fickle reason the King had obtained from his courtiers. My father's adherence to the Old Ways made the King and his advisers strip him of the privilege, when the church of Nottingham was built and priests untaught in our ways, not knowing whom we served, wrote a letter asking for money from my father. The King in turn took away my father's lands, his lordship with them, and gave it to the church of Nottingham. The people did not forget my father's kindness during the years he was a Lord, so his eventual priesthood in our town seemed natural.

The Villagers still call us lady and lord, partly out of respect, partly for the wrath of my brother. He might beat one of they do not call me lady in his presence. I fear there is nothing that I might do for him. He takes all things with the barest thread of hope, sometimes not at all.

But William. Will had the hardest time adjusting to his new surroundings of thatch and wood. He had loved the graceful, cold stones of the house hewn out of the same cliffs where druids roamed, some lost, some on pilgrimages. He had hoped I believe to marry another Lady, one day. Court and shower her with favors as only a lord could give. Now he is but a priest's son, and sentenced to speeches not of beauty and the fields and sky, but of angels and saints and dirty pettiness. I see it in his face every day. One moment, when he is alone with us, he looks wistfully through the window, towards Nottingham, towards our house. Sometimes his mood remains black and forgetful, on other occasions he becomes a man, as simple and as content as our father. But Will is not my father. And Will was not there to see him die.

* * *

One of my father's best stories was one that he never told to the village during the blessed days. He thought that the story would stir too much imagination so close to the whispering hills and their blackened amethyst stones. On mornings and only if the sun shone brightly, the sky was bluer than the sea, he would tell it in a whisper it scared him so. He tells of a story of the sangreal. That holy stone of our Lord, a meteor, a burning fallen star that buried itself in the earth on Golgotha on which Christ bled. The stone was carried forth by Joseph and hidden away after he was kept alive and saved from the pit the Romans through him in.

When the sun was highest, my father would say the grail held such powers as to give a man a life beyond measuring. However, what dangers lay in that boon he said would undo a lesser man, as the grail was said to have been made from the Star of David and the blood that drew out the poison of our brokenness. Where it rests, no one truly knows. But knights, clad in white and black rode daily now to Jerusalem, hoping it remained in the city of King David. My father hoped they never found it. In some parts he disclosed knights deaths, maimed hands of those who touched it. English hands oft grew too greedy for new wonders in far off Jerusalem, and pilgrimages bought another English child every day as they trekked the treacherous roads, clutching the teeth of saints.

It was the last story he ever told.


	5. Dawn

The months after my father appointed Robin as sheriff were quiet, as was expected. Every morning in the cool dawn, I would arise and walk the fields, to see the man shooting into the trees, practicing on imaginary targets that I could not see. By the time the sun had reached the ride, he would climb the trees to retrieve his arrows, the darkness of the sky and the darkness of his heart fought back to beyond the rim of the sky when he finished.

In early autumn, when we expected my brother to return, the children began to tire of following him around the village as he patrolled for any drunkards and wayward Englishmen to set on their way. The morning of my brother's return, I got up before the frost yet melted, before the dawn when the stars still shine dimly. I went out and stood aside in the fields, closer than usual to watch Robin practice.

He had told me the evening my father made him sheriff he wanted dawn hours to himself, to be alone. So we would practice in the evening, playing with wooden swords, and blunted knifes. He and I skirmished in the evenings, testing each other's strengths. I was better at the knife than he was. He on the other hand, was the master of the bow. We laughed the first time I tried a low distant target in the thicket. I missed it miserably and had to fish it out of a patch of thorns, but I emerged triumphant and prickly. He had smiled then, a rare gift that I hungered for. My brother never smiled. My father would laugh when I told him funny things, but smiles were as jewels after my mother died. I tried my best to make him smile, if only for my stupid mistakes and small victories.

I went out every morning to see from observation what I could improve in my skills, but also to see him smile to himself, when he hit his targets, even as he changed tactics and angles at the last moment. I wanted to see his victories. Thus as he whipped out his knife that morning, slashed, and turned it in the air and at the dead tall grass, I knew that I saw something very different in him as he practiced this morning. I saw something awful in his eyes. Defeat, darkness even. The darkness was not growing less as I had thought. He laughed and smiled more every morning. But now, a fierceness. A cold, deadly anger that had long simmered until his soft and comfortable exterior that he wore for the children who watched us mock fight by the duck pond in the evening. It frightened me. It was a change I had seen it in my brother. A bitterness written in the cut of knife, the pinch of fingers on the feathers of an arrow.

I heard him whispering as he practiced, in a tongue that did not sound like ours, words carried on the wind to me like mourning doves. They sounded familiar. He thrust his long knife into the soft dewy ground one, twice, more times than I could count. I stood up in the tall grass, hoping that he might see me and stop killing foes that only haunted him.

His eyes met mine, his knife in mid-air. It tumbled out of his hands. He sunk to his knees and bowed his head. I wanted to go to him, hold him, and tell him the things he fought were ghosts and nothing more. It was what I always did with my brother.

But this man was a stranger to me still, though I longed to understand what drove him on, what kept him from sleeping through the sun's wake. I took a deep breath and…

I went to him, slowly. He did not move. His breath was heavy and his shoulders tense, his eyes narrowed, staring at the knife, in despair and almost disbelief. I knelt beside him, tucking my feet under me, and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Sheriff?"

He straighten himself, and turned his head to look at me.

He looked at me with such intensity I nearly stopped breathing. I withdrew my hand from his shoulder.

"No, don't" he began to say, snatching my hand. He let go almost instantly.

"I'm sorry." He said after pause, and sighed heavily looking back at the knife.

He looked back up as I rose, feeling now I should leave him be and get the last arrow that was stuck in the low limb of a tree while he recovered. He caught my intention, though, and stood with me. I paused. His whole body seemed to be rooted to the earth.

"Marian," he whispered.

I stared at him, surprised. He had never called me by my name. It was always Lady, or Lady Marian, but never my name. The fervor in his eyes was still there.

"Can you hold me?"

I barely heard his words they were so soft. I realized then his hands were trembling.

He looked lost, in a dream his eyes staring through me. It was not by me that he wanted to be held by. He longed for someone in his past, far off, more beautiful, less Saxon.

I surprised myself even so by wrapping my arms around him, bringing him close. For one breathless moment he remained stiff and unmoving, a moment when I thought I had done him wrong but then he wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly. I did not know why he needed to hold me, but it felt unbelievably right. His head sank into my shoulder and I heard a shuddering breath come up from his chest. It felt as if he would hold me forever.

Then he released me, as quickly as I had begun to cling to him and he walked towards the arrow stuck in the tree.

My heart in my throat, I whispered to the empty air.

"Why will you not tell me your name?"


End file.
